Cisco ACI Valuable Features

Syed Ali Wajahat

Sr Network and Security Consultant (SDN & Security) at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Among the valuable features are the integration with VMM domains and their Layer 4 and Layer 7 devices, like device packages for F5, Palo Alto, and ASA. We are also doing automation from ACI and we have integration with Azure. With the Azure stack integration we can have total automation. We can configure the EPGs from there, and we can configure load balancing functionalities from there as well. The most useful feature is that you don't need to configure anything on ACI itself. You can configure on Azure and it will provision your application. This is the highest level of automation in Microsoft. In the second level of integration, you create the EPGs and the gateways on ACI yourself. Then, it will be configured on a SCVMM and you tag the VLANs there. It removes the hassle of configuring code groups and VLAN tags on the VMM, the virtualization domain, on the virtualization platform. You configure within ACI, and it will be visible there. It removes the networking administrative part from the system side, and you have complete control there. You can also have microsegmentation. You can have isolation for a certain part of the EPGs. In addition, you have a complete fabric you can connect to and you can have a static binding all over the fabric. You don't need to configure specific VLANs or run different cables. All of switches are connected to the spine, so you have complete reachability all over the fabric. You can have multi-tenancy. You can have multiple fabric configurations for different types of connectivity. You would not have this on normal switching fabric. View full review »

Imran Alvi

Network Consultant at Onstack Inc

The best part of ACI is that it can integrate with a lot of virtual environments like VMware, Hyper-V, and KVM. That's the best feature that sticks out in my mind because I have worked with customers who were looking into different solutions. The biggest selling point for them, which finalized their choice of ACI, was because it supported both Microsoft and VMware. View full review »

DataCent582b

Data Center Implementation Engineer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

In a very general way, the ease of access, ease of use, and ease of connecting the system is a valuable feature in itself. The solution doesn't really increase detection rates as that is not what it was created for. Threat prevention comes from other devices that might be connected to the Cisco ACI that monitors external traffic. The ACI solution maintains what end-of-life products would be doing and offers other opportunities to unify solutions. View full review »

It adds a layer of complication but one area where it has an advantage, a benefit, is that you're able to reuse a specific integration. If you add another server, you can use a specific integration and assign it to another port. You can back up the configuration, restore a configuration. It's easier compared to the traditional way of keeping a text file of the configuration. With ACI the management itself has been improved since you can manage it using the graphical user interface. There a lot of integrations that can be done. VMware can be integrated with ACI, that's another advantage, although we did not use it as much because the client also has its own virtualization software. View full review »

ITEvolutd7ab

IT Evolution Manager at a aerospace/defense firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Once we have it running, it should be easier for us to program our IT rather than going case-by-case, by switches and different elements, or program it by hand. View full review »

SystemsNd760

Systems Network Manager at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

This is a modern, next-generation solution, and it is where the platform is going. I have been told that this is an easy solution to configure, but we are just starting to deploy it, so that is to be determined. View full review »

Mark Hayden

Lead Network Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

The good side of it is being able to control your network switching and routing in the data center from a single control point. View full review »

SeniorNe9978

Senior Network Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The fact that it's modern and that it's easy to configure are the two most valuable features. View full review »

There are many features which are useful, like the automatic completion of the VXLAN. We don't need to configure any part of the VXLAN, which is tedious to do. View full review »

PaulIlavarasu Balasekar

Technical Lead at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable features include * microsegmentation * L3 Out features * the common tenant and tenancy model. Regarding microsegmentation, generally, in Layer 2, there are restrictions between VLANs. When you do microsegmentation, by name, by IP address, or MAC address, you can create a microsegmented EPG and you can group within an EPG. Generally, all the endpoints that are part of an EPG can talk to each other. But when you create a microsegmented EPG you are creating restrictions. Regarding the tenancy model, when you have a host data center and multiple customers and you want to build a dedicated infrastructure for a customer, you have to physically suppress the devices and you have to think a lot about security features. But with ACI, you don't need to buy a dedicated setup for each customer. Using one setup, you can create multiple tenants, and each tenant represents one customer. There are common services that are used by all the customers, like a DNS server or any web servers. You can keep the servers on the common tenant. In that way you can use the tenancy model efficiently. View full review »

Byron Hooper

Senior Network Engineer at a insurance company with 201-500 employees

The features we find most valuable is the integration with the virtual switches of our UCS platform. It gives a lot of visibility right from the ACI console, the ability to channel out the traffic and segment it without having to get into separate physical hardware or trying to figure out VDCs manually. So far that's been really powerful and extremely useful for us. View full review »

NetworkEec9b

Network Engineer at CS Computer Systems

It eases our deployment. Now, we use service requests when there's a project and we have to deploy it. So when the networking team gets a service request it'll be two clicks, anyone can do it. It will be less of a job, and it will be easier and faster. The main benefit is the simplicity of the deployment. On the flipside, it's also a drawback because if only one person does it and if he does something wrong, the whole system can stop working. If ten people are doing ten different things and one person messes up, it's only one error and it's easier to isolate the problem and fix it. A customer is going to deploy something on their own and more often than not, they don't have the knowledge and experience to understand what can go wrong, so they might accidentally clog the network. View full review »

ITNetwor4773

IT Network at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

The centralized management of the entire network data center, in this case with ACI, is the most valuable feature. By having access to some powerful APIs you can build your own tool to speak to the ACI controller, then with that, you can deploy things really fast. Having the option to build your own tools and then using the centralized management of the ACI to push the configuration to the network devices is very valuable. View full review »

Dinesh Thathanath

Sr Manager at Cognizant

The most valuable feature of this solution is the single pane of management. You can have various API integrations and you can have software-defined scripts. Cisco ACI can build things for you which was not possible on legacy networks. View full review »

Dash Brousseau

Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

The most valuable feature of the solution is having a central point to log in. I have a simple dashboard that has all my devices connected. That is what I'm looking for. View full review »

NetworkE623b

Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature is that we have centralized management and control of pretty much the entire data center and the architecture of it. It gives us a genuine single pane of glass to look through to manage all of our devices. We're still in the process of doing the migration. We haven't migrated completely all of our applications out of our legacy into it yet. It was challenging at first, but getting easier now that we're starting to get into it. View full review »

Director5596

Director of Network and Security at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The most valuable feature is programmability, where we can manage a network via APIs and software, as opposed to having to manage complex hardware. View full review »

Assistan77f2

Assistant Director IT at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable feature at this stage is that it can do segmentation without running everything through a firewall. You're able to do segmentation without having firewalls in the middle of all your connections. It is extendable to other data centers. You can extend your Layer 2 VLANs over Layer 3, using VXLAN. View full review »

NetworkM787d

Network Manager at a university with 501-1,000 employees

The most valuable feature is the integration with vCenter, as it makes it easier for the systems and network to interoperate. View full review »

Platformbd19

Platform Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Its programmability: You can do stuff to policies to make them more flexible, allowing you to connect devices in new ways. View full review »

We have the flexibility to bring an application from wherever it is located from one end of application to the other. It has overlay at the end. View full review »

NetworkAc25c

Network Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

The valuable feature is its configuration policy. We can configure it because the policy is used for all the switches. We do not have to implement all the configuration on every switch. Also, it fully integrates with most of our other tools, like Infoblox or vCenter, as its very powerful. View full review »

* Its provisioning. * It has the fastest automation. You can move and deploy services in just a couple of minutes. View full review »

NetworkE67f2

Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

It can easily do a snapshot before you do any change, and if something goes wrong, you can just rollback. It's pretty smooth, and it helps. The UI is quite intuitive. View full review »

MajorCha1741

Major Change Supervisor at Vodafone

The straightforward migration of all of the applications and loop balancing are the two most valuable features. Also, the measurement of their customer-wide sources is very straightforward. It's another dimension of the networks. View full review »

* It scales very well. When you increasingly scale with it, it makes the product easier to work with. * You can automate it. * It has a lot of insight into monitoring and traffic. However, this could also be improved. View full review »

IT Networker Engineer at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

The most valuable features are the automation with the different systems for the software development and the ability to provision switches in hours rather than days. Automation is the main criteria why we chose to go with this solution. View full review »

NetworkA92ac

Network Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

It improves security and automation. It is stable and provides flexibility with different workloads. It is also more powerful from a security point of view. View full review »

NetworkE486a

Network Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It offers multitenancy. The opportunity to install it on the same platform with a huge amount of customers. View full review »

Tabbrez Balbbale

Security Advisor at https://globalqart,com

The ACI fabric supports more than 64,000 dedicated tenant networks. A single fabric can support more than one million IPv4/IPv6 endpoints, more than 64,000 tenants, and more than 200,000 10G ports. The ACI fabric enables any service (physical or virtual) anywhere with no need for additional software or hardware gateways to connect between the physical and virtual services and normalizes encapsulations for virtual extensible local area network (VXLAN)/VLAN/network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation (NVGRE). View full review »